Nationally, 16 of the nation’s top 30 highest-paying occupations are in the medical field, with anesthesiologist bringing in the highest pay.
Anesthesiologists are required to complete a four-year undergraduate college degree, four years of medical school, and a four-year anesthesiology residency program. Most anesthesiologists become board certified, and many complete an additional fellowship year of specialty training.
Wage stagnation has not been a problem for jobs in health care. One of the job market’s two steadiest industries of the past decade, along with information technology, health care has seen consistent growth in wages in recent years, according to CareerCast.com, which tracks wage growth.
Litigation also fuels the high salaries that those in the medical professions earn. Surgeons face exponentially higher risk of malpractice lawsuits than other medical fields, a New England Journal of Medicine study found.
But unlike other large cities in Ohio, Dayton has more engineers receiving the highest paychecks when comparing occupations with more than 1,000 people in them, data shows.
More than 13,000 people are employed in high paying engineering jobs across the Dayton region, according to the Department of Labor.
In occupations with more than 1,000 people in the Dayton area, three out of the top 10 highest paying occupations are in aerospace and electrical engineering fields. The engineering jobs have an average median salary of $101,100 and an average hourly salary of $48.60.
Dayton has a rich history of innovation and design, said Jason Eckert, Director of Career Services at the University of Dayton, and this has led to engineers becoming some of the top paid positions.
“The economy has certainly changed in the last 20 years with a lot of the traditional manufacturing being affected. However, there are still so many wonderful manufactures and companies in the Dayton region and they are thirsty to hire engineering students graduating from universities like, University of Dayton, Wright State, Miami, and Ohio State,” Eckert said.
Engineering students have done exceptionally well in terms of average starting salary, said Eckert. “Employment is ultimately a game of supply and demand. People that have skills that are in demand in our economy are typically paid more,” Eckert said.
“Engineering firms are looking to hire students while they’re still in school,” Eckert said. “Most companies use internships and cooperative education opportunities to recruit students.”
Eckert said it’s challenging to earn a degree in engineering. “
So, when firms need to hire an electrical engineer there are only so many around the country to choose from. Also, those individuals have a very unique skill set,” Eckert said.
“We’re blessed at the University of Dayton that several of corporations have decided to build right on our campus, specifically GE Aviation and Emerson Climate Technologies,” Eckert said.
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